Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Sneak Previews

After last year’s Microcastle/Weird Era juggernaut, Deerhunteresque became a legitimate, maybe even necessary, adjective, and a new song called “Rainwater Cassette Exchange” can be described as nothing other than Deerhunteresque. The subject matter--a cassette exchange, like a VHS dream, is a great topic for a song--and the album cover fonts alone prove that Bradford Cox and company are currently the leading figures in hazy weird rock ‘n’ roll America.

Which is not to say that Sonic Youth aren’t still awesome. They show no signs of wear on “Sacred Trickster,” from the forthcoming The Eternal. The three tuneful and ripped albums that preceded this new one have been stellar; what might make The Eternal all the more special is that Mark Ibold (ex-Pavement) is now an official member of the band. Hopefully he will last longer as an official member than Jim O’Rourke.

Jarvis Cocker’s “Angela” has the sound of a classic British Invasion stomp, good enough but failing to indicate whether Jarvis and recordist Steve Albini (whose best recent production work can be found on El Rey, his reunion with incendiary British pop group The Wedding Present) have brought out the best in each other on Jarv’s upcoming Further Complications. Wasn’t that the name of Art Brut’s second album?

Ken Stringfellow (ex-Posies, part-time member of R.E.M. and Big Star, and solo singer-songwriter extraordinaire) seems to have been doing nothing but traveling around Europe and South America since the release of the fantastic Soft Commands in 2004, but last year he found time to record an album with some younger (than him) and energetic dudes called The Disciplines. The result was Smoking Kills (the truest declarative album title since Meat is Murder), which from what I gather is infinitely more rockin’ than anything you’ll find on Stringfellow’s solo albums, and which has finally found a U.S. release. Listen here.

Adam Franklin (Swervedriver, Magnetic Morning) has a new solo album called Spent Bullets, which is the best title for a hazy psychedelic rock album since his previous one, the very nice Bolts of Melody. Listen here.